International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019 89
weren’t being supervised and Ms. Israel reports
children as young as three or four being given
omelets containing psychedelic mushrooms. She
attributes these developments to strains caused
by members suddenly having to get paying jobs
to pay off Family debts. Most of the money went
to Love, but workers were allowed keep a small
amount for their households. Because some
households were more successful than others, a
divide developed between the haves and the
have-nots, along with resentment on both sides.
The most serious problem was that Love Israel
had become a cocaine addict with an extremely
expensive habit. I would like to have seen more
on this subject in the book because Love’s
addiction was the central concern driving the
palace coup that led to the breakup in 1983.
Love had created a belief system and social
structure that made him the center of everything
and gave him ultimate authority, and members
were accustomed to his micromanaging their
lives. For a while, the arrangement worked, but
once cocaine appeared on the scene, Love
became increasingly erratic, withdrawn, and
eventually inaccessible. Without him, the Family
lost its focus and cohesion. As more and more
members began disregarding the rules, it became
safe to talk about once-forbidden topics, such as
why a respected elder lady, Dedication, had
defected. Frustrated by Love’s bad business
decisions but lacking control over Family
finances, the elders secretly drafted a letter to
Love accusing him of negligence and self-
indulgence, and asking him to turn the
leadership of the community over to them.
When Love refused to budge, two principle
elders decided to leave, and their departure
precipitated the mass exit of 1983.
The Love Family didn’t disintegrate as many
expected, but instead split into factions that
continue to this day. The first but smaller faction
consists of those who remained loyal to Love
and now call themselves the Love Israel
Family.3 Love quit using cocaine and moved the
remnants of his following to the Family ranch,
the only property that hadn’t been lost in
3 For information on this phase of Family history, see LeWarne,
2009.
lawsuits brought by ex-members. Under a new
name, the Love Israel Family, the community
maintained its hierarchical structure and much of
its old culture but now its teenagers attended
public school and the adults paid rent to live
there. Outwardly the group looked much the
same, but it could never muster the enthusiasm
or collective energy of the glory days, and in
2004 mounting debts forced Love to sell the
ranch. By the time Love died in 2016, the
Family had been reduced to a handful of elderly
members living in a single house, in addition to
a few second-generation members who had
given up communal life to live in the World.
Rather than dispersing, most defectors remained
in the Pacific Northwest, primarily western
Washington, where they constitute a relatively
tight but nonexclusive network of friends and
acquaintances, within which old Family cliques
persist. A few still lead counterculture lives, but
most have been reabsorbed by the World. For
Ms. Israel, meeting members she hadn’t seen
since the breakup was surreal. Now they had
ordinary names and looked like anyone else in
the World. Even their personalities were
different.
After she left the Family, it took Ms. Israel about
ten years before she decided to reconnect with
either faction. For the second time in her young
life, she spent much of this time in culture
shock. Suddenly she had been thrust back into a
world that now seemed strange, repulsive, and
dangerous. So out of touch was she that she once
mistook a urinal for a drinking fountain. She
suffered from depression and anxiety, felt like a
misfit, and got caught up in drinking and drugs
but in the book she eschews the “victim
mentality” that she sees in many ex-members (p.
613). She found it therapeutic to write about her
experiences and eventually was able to attend
college, where she studied other communes and
also psychology and sociology. She says her
experiences with the Love Family left her with a
distrust of authority, a fear of conformity, and a
desire to avoid groups, all of which she
attributes to the Family’s stifling “mind control”
(p. 626). On the positive side, she claims to have
benefitted by learning self-restraint, the creative
power of thought, and the ability to focus by
staying present, all of which she says have made
weren’t being supervised and Ms. Israel reports
children as young as three or four being given
omelets containing psychedelic mushrooms. She
attributes these developments to strains caused
by members suddenly having to get paying jobs
to pay off Family debts. Most of the money went
to Love, but workers were allowed keep a small
amount for their households. Because some
households were more successful than others, a
divide developed between the haves and the
have-nots, along with resentment on both sides.
The most serious problem was that Love Israel
had become a cocaine addict with an extremely
expensive habit. I would like to have seen more
on this subject in the book because Love’s
addiction was the central concern driving the
palace coup that led to the breakup in 1983.
Love had created a belief system and social
structure that made him the center of everything
and gave him ultimate authority, and members
were accustomed to his micromanaging their
lives. For a while, the arrangement worked, but
once cocaine appeared on the scene, Love
became increasingly erratic, withdrawn, and
eventually inaccessible. Without him, the Family
lost its focus and cohesion. As more and more
members began disregarding the rules, it became
safe to talk about once-forbidden topics, such as
why a respected elder lady, Dedication, had
defected. Frustrated by Love’s bad business
decisions but lacking control over Family
finances, the elders secretly drafted a letter to
Love accusing him of negligence and self-
indulgence, and asking him to turn the
leadership of the community over to them.
When Love refused to budge, two principle
elders decided to leave, and their departure
precipitated the mass exit of 1983.
The Love Family didn’t disintegrate as many
expected, but instead split into factions that
continue to this day. The first but smaller faction
consists of those who remained loyal to Love
and now call themselves the Love Israel
Family.3 Love quit using cocaine and moved the
remnants of his following to the Family ranch,
the only property that hadn’t been lost in
3 For information on this phase of Family history, see LeWarne,
2009.
lawsuits brought by ex-members. Under a new
name, the Love Israel Family, the community
maintained its hierarchical structure and much of
its old culture but now its teenagers attended
public school and the adults paid rent to live
there. Outwardly the group looked much the
same, but it could never muster the enthusiasm
or collective energy of the glory days, and in
2004 mounting debts forced Love to sell the
ranch. By the time Love died in 2016, the
Family had been reduced to a handful of elderly
members living in a single house, in addition to
a few second-generation members who had
given up communal life to live in the World.
Rather than dispersing, most defectors remained
in the Pacific Northwest, primarily western
Washington, where they constitute a relatively
tight but nonexclusive network of friends and
acquaintances, within which old Family cliques
persist. A few still lead counterculture lives, but
most have been reabsorbed by the World. For
Ms. Israel, meeting members she hadn’t seen
since the breakup was surreal. Now they had
ordinary names and looked like anyone else in
the World. Even their personalities were
different.
After she left the Family, it took Ms. Israel about
ten years before she decided to reconnect with
either faction. For the second time in her young
life, she spent much of this time in culture
shock. Suddenly she had been thrust back into a
world that now seemed strange, repulsive, and
dangerous. So out of touch was she that she once
mistook a urinal for a drinking fountain. She
suffered from depression and anxiety, felt like a
misfit, and got caught up in drinking and drugs
but in the book she eschews the “victim
mentality” that she sees in many ex-members (p.
613). She found it therapeutic to write about her
experiences and eventually was able to attend
college, where she studied other communes and
also psychology and sociology. She says her
experiences with the Love Family left her with a
distrust of authority, a fear of conformity, and a
desire to avoid groups, all of which she
attributes to the Family’s stifling “mind control”
(p. 626). On the positive side, she claims to have
benefitted by learning self-restraint, the creative
power of thought, and the ability to focus by
staying present, all of which she says have made
